haven't gotten a chance to post in a few days, so here's a quick and easy post that also allows me to break up the monotony of the last several text-only outings. see? i care about you, the reader, and your always-seeking-excitement eyeballs. don't thank me now. wait 'til after you've watched this clio-deserving performance...
so here it is. me. in a commercial i shot last year for peter piper pizza.
2008-03-31
2008-03-25
What's to hate?
while driving home tonight, NPR aired a story about the issue of electability for the democratic presidential nominee. the surprise of the story was that a group of experts was polled and they were evenly divided about whether barack obama or hillary clinton is more electable in a general election. i'm not a political expert (i'm not even a registered democrat - i lean libertarian if you must know), but i am probably more in touch with the goings-on of politics than most people i know and all i can think is: anyone who thinks hillary clinton is more electable than barack obama is nuts. simply put, REPUBLICANS HAVE AN EXCEPTIONAL, IRRATIONAL, RALLY-ROUND-THEIR-CANDIDATE HATRED OF HILLARY CLINTON. this hatred trumps everything else in terms of electability. republicans will rise up and rally for john mccain, coming out in greater, stronger numbers than they would against barack obama. republicans thrive on hate and fear - and those are the exact qualities that are most awakened (awoke? waked up?) when hillary is mentioned. obama as the opponent doesn't energize the republican base the way hillary does. and seeing as i'm no fan of this current administration or the current state of the republican party, i wholeheartedly hope that obama is the nominee come election day.
btw, wanna have some fun? find a staunch republican, casually bring up hillary clinton, and watch them squirm and get angry. then, ask them why they hate her so much. i've done it multiple times and no one has EVER had an answer. it's like they've all been brainwashed to hate her... but don't know why.
btw, wanna have some fun? find a staunch republican, casually bring up hillary clinton, and watch them squirm and get angry. then, ask them why they hate her so much. i've done it multiple times and no one has EVER had an answer. it's like they've all been brainwashed to hate her... but don't know why.
Tech Support OCTDUX
first, i'm getting tired of the names of these tech support posts yet i remain loyal to the system i've created.
second, was out all day, but i'm fairly certain the dsl is working correctly. which makes this confusing all over again...
third, ANOTHER voicemail from verizon today. the whole "courtesy call" to let me know they're still working on the problem. perhaps if they actually worked this hard on it, i wouldn't have had to call in so many times.
seriously, verizon, you're making yourself look needy and desperate. if you have to call every day to tell me you're still working on it... when it seems to already be fixed... maybe you never really understood the problem our relationship had in the first place.
second, was out all day, but i'm fairly certain the dsl is working correctly. which makes this confusing all over again...
third, ANOTHER voicemail from verizon today. the whole "courtesy call" to let me know they're still working on the problem. perhaps if they actually worked this hard on it, i wouldn't have had to call in so many times.
seriously, verizon, you're making yourself look needy and desperate. if you have to call every day to tell me you're still working on it... when it seems to already be fixed... maybe you never really understood the problem our relationship had in the first place.
2008-03-24
Tech Support SEPTDUX
2:20pm today - another recorded phone call from verizon, "this is a courtesy call to let you know that we are still working on your problem."
how 'bout you show me the courtesy of NOT CONFUSING ME ANYMORE?!
how 'bout you show me the courtesy of NOT CONFUSING ME ANYMORE?!
Tech Support SEXDUX
let me start by saying this: our dsl appears to be fixed. i say this because it doesn't seem to be going out intermittently anymore. if it's been going out the last day, it did it when neither me nor my wife were using the internet.
all that said, it's hard to tell whether verizon is done working on it or not. there were at least three calls yesterday from verizon. the first said essentially "we've fixed your problem. if you need more help, call back in the next day or we'll close the trouble ticket." the next two recordings said essentially "we're still working on your problem." is this a byproduct of them not properly closing out trouble tickets from calls 1 through 4? i don't know. do they not check the account to see if other employees already fixed the problem? apparently not. all i know is we're practically right back at the beginning because our dsl works... FOR NOW.
all that said, it's hard to tell whether verizon is done working on it or not. there were at least three calls yesterday from verizon. the first said essentially "we've fixed your problem. if you need more help, call back in the next day or we'll close the trouble ticket." the next two recordings said essentially "we're still working on your problem." is this a byproduct of them not properly closing out trouble tickets from calls 1 through 4? i don't know. do they not check the account to see if other employees already fixed the problem? apparently not. all i know is we're practically right back at the beginning because our dsl works... FOR NOW.
2008-03-22
Tech Support CINCDUX
at this point, i'm just glad there'll have to be, at the very least, a wrap-up sixth tech support post 'cause it'll be fun to type "sexdux."
HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE is where the journey has taken us so far.
after having the rep hang up on me not ten seconds after begging me not to hang up, i decided to wait five minutes. why? well, i thought maybe, just this once, they might actually use the "alternate callback number" they've asked for on every phone call.
nope.
i call back, work my way through the menus, get in touch with a new rep named "James." he very quickly puts me in contact with his team leader, "Charlie", who tells me he is monitoring the situation because he knows i've called in a few times.
without getting into the boring details, the first 15 minutes was more power down/restart/reconnect stuff. the next 40 minutes was a series of efforts to escalate the trouble ticket so that the central office can try to fix the problem. this involved mostly waiting on hold while he worked on the report with an occasional "don't worry, sir, i'm still here working on your problem."
he claims to have gotten the ticket escalated to the MAIN CENTRAL OFFICE (is that part of the dharma initiative, by any chance?). now, it will be fixed by tuesday - at which point, i am supposed to get a call either way tuesday morning from the MAIN CENTRAL OFFICE about the status and whether or not a tech repair guy needs to come out to the apartment building.
i can only assume i will both hear nothing from verizon, still have intermittent dsl outages, and have to call back on tuesday. thank god there's basketball to watch.
HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE is where the journey has taken us so far.
after having the rep hang up on me not ten seconds after begging me not to hang up, i decided to wait five minutes. why? well, i thought maybe, just this once, they might actually use the "alternate callback number" they've asked for on every phone call.
nope.
i call back, work my way through the menus, get in touch with a new rep named "James." he very quickly puts me in contact with his team leader, "Charlie", who tells me he is monitoring the situation because he knows i've called in a few times.
without getting into the boring details, the first 15 minutes was more power down/restart/reconnect stuff. the next 40 minutes was a series of efforts to escalate the trouble ticket so that the central office can try to fix the problem. this involved mostly waiting on hold while he worked on the report with an occasional "don't worry, sir, i'm still here working on your problem."
he claims to have gotten the ticket escalated to the MAIN CENTRAL OFFICE (is that part of the dharma initiative, by any chance?). now, it will be fixed by tuesday - at which point, i am supposed to get a call either way tuesday morning from the MAIN CENTRAL OFFICE about the status and whether or not a tech repair guy needs to come out to the apartment building.
i can only assume i will both hear nothing from verizon, still have intermittent dsl outages, and have to call back on tuesday. thank god there's basketball to watch.
Tech Support QUATDUX
sunny saturday here at the beach... and a perfect time to call back verizon dsl regarding the problem i previously discussed HERE, HERE, and HERE.
this call went much the same as the last three. rep sees that previous tickets were started, asks what the problem is, has me do the power down/restart process while he does the same thing that didn't work the last three times. when it doesn't work, he has me remove the router from my set-up and just connect directly to the modem and press and hold the reset button for a minute. still doesn't work.
here's where it gets HILARIOUS. he seems to finally realize there's a bigger problem and says, "i'm going to have to put you on hold for a couple minutes while i connect to the central office. please don't hang up on me."
"i won't."
"okay. don't hang up. i will be back in a minute."
CLICK. SILENCE. WAITING IN THE HOPES THAT THE CLICKS AREN'T THE CLICKS OF BEING HUNG UP ON. SILENCE. OPERATOR VOICE: "THE TIME ALLOTTED FOR YOU TO DIAL HAS PASSED. PLEASE HANG UP AND TRY AGAIN."
after hearing it three times, i hang up.
this call went much the same as the last three. rep sees that previous tickets were started, asks what the problem is, has me do the power down/restart process while he does the same thing that didn't work the last three times. when it doesn't work, he has me remove the router from my set-up and just connect directly to the modem and press and hold the reset button for a minute. still doesn't work.
here's where it gets HILARIOUS. he seems to finally realize there's a bigger problem and says, "i'm going to have to put you on hold for a couple minutes while i connect to the central office. please don't hang up on me."
"i won't."
"okay. don't hang up. i will be back in a minute."
CLICK. SILENCE. WAITING IN THE HOPES THAT THE CLICKS AREN'T THE CLICKS OF BEING HUNG UP ON. SILENCE. OPERATOR VOICE: "THE TIME ALLOTTED FOR YOU TO DIAL HAS PASSED. PLEASE HANG UP AND TRY AGAIN."
after hearing it three times, i hang up.
2008-03-21
Rules for Commercials
i've been watching a lot of basketball these last couple days what with the NCAA tourney and my beloved SYRACUSE in the NIT. which means - i've been watching a lot of commercials. the same commercials. which usually means hitting the mute button. but not always! since i'm smack dab in the middle of the male, 18-49 demographic, i figure ad people might wanna know what i like. so here it is, some simple rules for a good commercial during a basketball game:
- make it funny. really funny. something that's funny after repeated viewings. for example, SONIC runs those commercials with people in the car outside a sonic and they're all great. i even go so far as to take the tv off of mute when they air. of course, i've seen the mocha java chiller one a thousand times now - maybe time to surprise me with a different one.
- if you're not gonna go funny, put a dog in it. BUD LIGHT repeatedly tries to do funny commercials, but they're usually lame and annoying. however, in the "gives you the ability to speak with animals" one, they counteract the lameness with a cute dog saying "sausage" over and over. and i watch over and over. also good, the sports for PURINA (i think) where the voiceover is the dog talking about how he ended up in the pound and how happy he would be to get adopted. tearjerker every time.
- don't go dramatic unless it involves athletes kicking ass. good example: the new line of "my better is better than your better" from NIKE. they've got that kick ass saul williams "list of demands" song in the one version, too. under no circumstances should you take someone funny and put them in a non-funny commercial. DO YOU HEAR ME, BUDWEISER?! WHY ARE YOU WASTING ROB RIGGLE IN A WHOLE CAMPAIGN OF SERIOUS ADS?!?!
2008-03-20
Tech Support TREDUX
that's right... the dsl made it a whole ten minutes this time! and to think, i was optimistic because the last verizon rep didn't end with "for now." i should've known. it's always taken multiple phone calls to get our dsl fixed. my patience is wearing thin, BUT there are some positives...
- i didn't have to wait on hold on any of the three calls. that is a HUGE improvement for verizon. used to be at least ten minutes of hold per call AT LEAST.
- i didn't get connected with their dial-up service department. used to be EVERY TIME i called i would wait on hold, get sent to the dial-up department, get transferred, and have to wait on hold again.
- the verizon reps didn't make me jump through hoops. i didn't have to say, "i've already done this twice! can we please move onto the next level of service?!?!" they saw my previous calls and acknowledged the problem.
Tech Support REDUX
well, it seems like the "goodbye for now" truly was eerily prophetic. not even a minute after i hung up the phone with verizon tech support, the dsl went out again. i called back and it seems like we did a more thorough job of powering down and resetting. it works. for now.
Tech Support
had some dsl problems over the last day. called verizon and they claim to have fixed the ip address issue. but in general, what's the exact wrong way for a customer service rep to end a phone call? how about this...
"goodbye for now."
have two little words ever seemed so ominous? FOR NOW. oh boy.
"goodbye for now."
have two little words ever seemed so ominous? FOR NOW. oh boy.
2008-03-18
REVIEW: Top Gear
there's a show that has completely captured my fan-dom... Top Gear. it airs on BBC America here in the US. and it is awesome. if you're from the UK, i'm sure you've seen it many many times since it's been airing for something like thirty years. (though they re-tooled it in 2001 or so, according to wikipedia, to give it the current format.) it's a car show... but appeals greatly to non-car people, too... as my wife would attest. they do more than review high-end cars. they review everyday cars, too... it's a lot more relatable when one segment is about a bugatti and the next is about cargo vans. they also participate in ridiculous challenges - racing across europe in a car bought for $1000 is a typical premise... and it's just the sort of thing that myself and my buddies would LOVE to do if we didn't have real life getting in the way.
while the ultimate compliment is to make an american version of a show - and they are working on an american version - it's the hosts that worry me most. you just know an american network/casting is going to go either "too big" or "too non-car guy" with the hosts... whereas the british hosts (presenters, as they say) fit the show without overpowering it, i suspect american producers won't do the same. if they're smart, they'll think more along the lines of the sportscenter guys and less about danny bonaduce or mark mcgrath.
not to mention - and this is no small point - THE SHOW IS ALREADY IN ENGLISH. you don't need an american version to do the same exact things that the british guys are already doing. half the time, they're doing high-end, ultra-fast sports cars - a ferrari is a ferrari in the UK and the US. the other half is beater cars - an old fiat in the UK is an old omni in the US. can we really not deal with an accent and some different places? does it make it better for us if they drive from philly to pittsburgh instead of london to edinburgh? no.
while i don't trust the american version to be as good... or even remotely necessary... i do know the british version is fantastic.
http://www.topgear.com/
while the ultimate compliment is to make an american version of a show - and they are working on an american version - it's the hosts that worry me most. you just know an american network/casting is going to go either "too big" or "too non-car guy" with the hosts... whereas the british hosts (presenters, as they say) fit the show without overpowering it, i suspect american producers won't do the same. if they're smart, they'll think more along the lines of the sportscenter guys and less about danny bonaduce or mark mcgrath.
not to mention - and this is no small point - THE SHOW IS ALREADY IN ENGLISH. you don't need an american version to do the same exact things that the british guys are already doing. half the time, they're doing high-end, ultra-fast sports cars - a ferrari is a ferrari in the UK and the US. the other half is beater cars - an old fiat in the UK is an old omni in the US. can we really not deal with an accent and some different places? does it make it better for us if they drive from philly to pittsburgh instead of london to edinburgh? no.
while i don't trust the american version to be as good... or even remotely necessary... i do know the british version is fantastic.
http://www.topgear.com/
2008-03-13
Garfield is funny again...
a buddy forwarded this to me last week and it really is compelling, funny, intriguing, etc. who knew that the key to making Garfield funny was... removing Garfield!?
www.garfieldminusgarfield.com for a whole bunch more.
Just wonderful
i can't even begin to explain how badly i want to know the backstory of this video. thoughts?
2008-03-12
Family Trip
been over a week since i've posted... got busy right before a six-day trip out of town to visit the in-laws in florida. had a great time, the wife's family is very nice and was very accommodating. but still, the trip begs some questions...
at what age do you no longer care whether or not you're getting the most out of your high-tech gear? i couldn't blog because they don't have their wireless router plugged in. no big deal. though one would think that it'd be easier to just leave it hooked up rather than undo it. i know i haven't touched my router in years. would've been more "online" if not for the fact that their computer is the absolute slowest i've ever used. as best we can tell, mom and dad in-law have close to a hundred different spyware and virus protection programs running all the time. good if you're surfing oodles of porn. bad if you, like them, just want to check some e-mail and download a crossword puzzle or twenty. anyway, when we weren't using the computer, we were watching a decent amount of tv on their nice, hi-def set. only they rarely ever had the screen on the correct setting. they would put on NBC or CBS in HD... but would leave it on the setting that stretches the non-HD channels to fill up the whole widescreen. therefore, everything's stretched to fit and nothing's actually in HD even though we're on the HD channel. i tried my best to fix it whenever they weren't nearby the remote... but it always went back to the wrong setting, leaving me unable to pay attention to the show or the cut-off ticker at the bottom of the screen. do they not even notice?! and lastly, there was some lag in the surround sound whenever a DVD was played... leaving a slight, but very noticeable, echo effect. very annoying. very unnoticed by anyone but me apparently.
other, less answerable questions:
at what age do you begin to panic if you're not leaving for the airport three hours in advance? ft. myers is no o'hare - security lines aren't gonna be draped down I-75. we'll make it okay.
at what age do you make the jump from an occasional crossword puzzle to many, making them the main activity of the day?
in the ft. myers/naples area, where does anyone under 60 live? their neighborhood is practically a retirement community without being billed as that. in five days, i saw exactly one person under the age of 40 besides myself, my wife, and my nieces.
what's more fun than watching other families do their "family thing"? my brother-in-law repeatedly ribbed his parents for thinking it was cold when it went below 55 degrees. my wife would scream at her dad when he fast-forwarded what he thought was a slow part of a movie. and everyone just went on their merry way. i know similar things occur in my family and it'd be funny to be new enough to notice them.
besides these funny annoyances, it was a great trip. i look forward to seeing them all again soon and noticing even more quirks and idiosyncrasies.
at what age do you no longer care whether or not you're getting the most out of your high-tech gear? i couldn't blog because they don't have their wireless router plugged in. no big deal. though one would think that it'd be easier to just leave it hooked up rather than undo it. i know i haven't touched my router in years. would've been more "online" if not for the fact that their computer is the absolute slowest i've ever used. as best we can tell, mom and dad in-law have close to a hundred different spyware and virus protection programs running all the time. good if you're surfing oodles of porn. bad if you, like them, just want to check some e-mail and download a crossword puzzle or twenty. anyway, when we weren't using the computer, we were watching a decent amount of tv on their nice, hi-def set. only they rarely ever had the screen on the correct setting. they would put on NBC or CBS in HD... but would leave it on the setting that stretches the non-HD channels to fill up the whole widescreen. therefore, everything's stretched to fit and nothing's actually in HD even though we're on the HD channel. i tried my best to fix it whenever they weren't nearby the remote... but it always went back to the wrong setting, leaving me unable to pay attention to the show or the cut-off ticker at the bottom of the screen. do they not even notice?! and lastly, there was some lag in the surround sound whenever a DVD was played... leaving a slight, but very noticeable, echo effect. very annoying. very unnoticed by anyone but me apparently.
other, less answerable questions:
at what age do you begin to panic if you're not leaving for the airport three hours in advance? ft. myers is no o'hare - security lines aren't gonna be draped down I-75. we'll make it okay.
at what age do you make the jump from an occasional crossword puzzle to many, making them the main activity of the day?
in the ft. myers/naples area, where does anyone under 60 live? their neighborhood is practically a retirement community without being billed as that. in five days, i saw exactly one person under the age of 40 besides myself, my wife, and my nieces.
what's more fun than watching other families do their "family thing"? my brother-in-law repeatedly ribbed his parents for thinking it was cold when it went below 55 degrees. my wife would scream at her dad when he fast-forwarded what he thought was a slow part of a movie. and everyone just went on their merry way. i know similar things occur in my family and it'd be funny to be new enough to notice them.
besides these funny annoyances, it was a great trip. i look forward to seeing them all again soon and noticing even more quirks and idiosyncrasies.
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